We feel sure Hugh Grant would love the Social Shuttle even if when he asked your scribe one day what his occupation was and heard the reply (Australian journalist ) he responded "that's a contradiction in terms".
Grant was talking today on the Richard Bacon show on the BBC's
Radio Five Live which was broadcast from the offices of The Independent newspaper in London. He said he was still deciding if he should sue the News Of The World after being shown evidence by British police that he was a victim of phone hacking in the scandal sweeping the British media.
The actor is hopeful to see the end of tabloid newspapers : “We don’t need them we don’t want them and the sooner they go out of business the better."
On the tabloid's invasion of privacy he said: "They would go temporarily out of business because they rely almost entirely on stealing people’s privacy, but then I think they would actually be grateful because in six months, a year they would have to go back to being real journalists and they would feel good about themselves.”
Journalist Nick Davies who first wrote of the hacking scandal and who wrote Flat Earth News, a book about media manipulation was also on the programme and said Grant was "thinking along the right lines”.
Ironically, when Grant was busted in Hollywood with Devine Brown it was the making of his career. Never looked back really. We feel sure thousands of vicars all over the UK will rest easy if the NoTW goes to the wall plus websites like the Shuttle could only find a vastly increased audience (currently around 2000-2400 readers a day ).
# More news on the purported libel case that may be mounted by a Melbourne based celebrity against Facebook and it's founder Mark Zuckerberg. The Shuttle has read some of the legal advice on the case and Zuckerberg's words may come back to haunt him.
In the past week it has been revealed that Facebook hired a big PR firm to spread tales about Google. The escapade has completely backfired on Facebook.
Reading Facebook's introductions it goes to great pains, like many other social media websites, to point out that it cannot be held responsible for the content on Facebook as it is 'stored ' on outside servers which are not controlled by Facebook.
The Rumpole's advice is that the claim is nonsense as it attempts to avoid responsibility for publishing and a journalist, editor or publisher could make the same claim that their product is carried on outside newsstands etc.
But he also points to a speech given by Zuckerberg in 2010 and where he proclaimed that "the age of privacy is dead". Our learned friend says the statement points to the 'intent' of the net tsar to re-write privacy laws without having the right to !.
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US giants Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores have censored a book cover featuring Australian androgynous model, 19 year old Andre Pejic who has become the darling of the fashion world.
Read the story in the Mail Online.
